Lawrence Block

Characters refusing to talk? Plot plodding along? Where do good ideas come from anyway? In this wonderfully practical volume, two-time Edgar Award-winning novelist Lawrence Block takes an inside look at writing as a craft and as a career.

From studying the market, to mastering self-discipline and "creative procrastination," through coping with rejections, Telling Lies for Fun & Profit is an invaluable sourcebook of information.

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The craft of writing is a lot like spinning a web: You take threads and weave them skillfully together, and only you know where this intricate network of twists and turns begin and how it will end. Now, with Lawrence Block's expert advice, you can learn this art of entrapping your reader in a maze of fascinating fiction.

Spider, Spin Me a Web is the perfect companion volume to Block's previous book on writing, Telling Lies

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The Criminal Defense Lawyer. Redefined. Martin H. Ehrengraf, dapper and diabolical, may be Lawrence Block's darkest creation. He's the defense attorney who never sees the inside of a courtroom, because all his clients are innocent-no matter how guilty they may seem. Some even believe themselves to be guilty: they remember pulling the trigger, or wiring the dynamite to their spouse's car, or holding the bloody blade. But things have a way of working...

For fourteen years, five-time Edgar winner and MWA Grand Master Lawrence Block wrote a monthly column on fiction for Writers Digest magazine. These columns yielded four books regarded as classics: Telling Lies for Fun & Profit, Spider Spin Me a Web, The Liar's Bible...and now The Liar's Companion.

In the early 1970s, with “Deep Throat” and “The Devil in Miss Jones” rewriting film history, John Warren Wells hired on to write the script for a high-quality pornographic movie. Originally published by Dell, “Different Strokes” includes the remarkable script he delivered, the production diary he kept, an interview with the film's leading lady, and a 2012 afterword that puts it all into uncanny perspective. You'd better read the book,...

For almost three years, novelist and short-story writer Lawrence Block's monthly column, "Generally Speaking," was one of the most popular features in Linn's Stamp News. A general collector of pre-1940 issues, Block had the entire world of stamps as his subject, and he turned in thirty-three columns before he decided it was time to stop. But Keller, the author's fictional character, never lost his enthusiasm for philately. A wistful and introspective...